Rapport - VU innovations in Scholarly Communication
Maurice Vanderfeesten, Marjet Elemans, Matthijs de Zwaan
July 13, 2016
De UBVU wil haar dienstverlening graag zo dicht mogelijk laten aansluiten bij het wetenschappelijke communicatieproces van de onderzoekers van VU en VUmc.
Het wetenschappelijke communicatieproces is volop in beweging. Dit komt door de inzet van digitale middelen binnen de onderzoeksfases: Discovery, Analysis, Writing, Publication, Outreach en Assessment.
Het project doet onderzoek naar naar wat het gebruik is van deze digitale middelen binnen het VU en VUmc, en sluit hierbij aan bij een internationaal onderzoek waardoor resultaten vergeleken kunnen worden met andere landen.
De onderstaande resultaten zijn bedoeld als gespreksstof met de faculteiten om de dienstverlening te verbeteren, vernieuwen en te veranderen, zodat ze beter aansluit bij de fases van de onderzoekspraktijk van de onderzoekers.
1 Aanpak
Er zijn onderzoeksvragen door de vak- en thema specialisten opgesteld. Dit zijn de vragen die nodig zijn om het gesprek te voeren. Voor elke vraag is een raamwerk gemaakt waarbinnen het antwoord vanuit de enquete resultaten kan worden gegeven. Vanuit het oogpunt tijd, is gekozen om alleen de vragen te beantwoorden met de hoogste urgentie.
De vragen moeten antwoord geven voor twee vraag-categoriën: 1. Het toolgebruik binnen de VU in haar geheel 2. Het toolgebruik binnen Disciplines
Met name de laatste vraag-categorie is interessant voor vak- en themaspecialisten, waar ze inzicht krijgen in het tool-gebruik binnen de discipline die ze vertegenwoordigen.
2 Data gathering
Met deze enquete hebben we meegelift bij een bestaand onderzoek van Kramer, B. and J. Bosman, Innovations in scholarly communication - global survey on research tool usage [version 1; referees: awaiting peer review]. F1000Research 2016, 5:692 (doi: 10.12688/f1000research.8414.1)
We hebben een custom URL aangevraagd waardoor VU en VUmc onderzoekers in de binnengekomen data is te onderscheiden met de hash 7V4u8a. Van deze custom URL is een verkorte URL gemaakt [http://bit.ly/vu101innovations], zodat we de activiteit van de verspreiding makkelijker bij konden houden. We hebben aan de portefeuillehoudersonderzoek gevraagd deze verkorte URL door te sturen naar hun onderzoekers.
In twee e-mail acties leverde het in januari een activiteit op van 543 bezoekers, en in februari 296 bezoekers, in totaal 839 bezoekers.
De VU en VUmc hebben samen ongeveer 6000 personen wetenschappelijke staf.
3 Resultaten
De vraag-categorien komen ook terug in de nummering van de resultaten.
Elke vraag bevat een antwoord, aangevuld met diagrammen. Een vraag begint met een samenvattende uitleg en diagram en daarna volgen de sub-secties met gedetailleerdere diagrammen.
De Scholarly Communication Fases zullen gedurende het hele rapport terug komen: Discovery, Analysis, Writing, Publication, Outreach en Assessment.
4 Demographics
These demographics form the baseline of our study.
4.1 Survey outcomes
| Number of respondents | Value |
|---|---|
| World Wide | 20663 |
| Netherlands | 2041 |
| VU and VUmc | 531 |
The values below are within the set of VU & VUmc respondents.
| Discipline (multi-choice) | Value |
|---|---|
| Physical Sciences | 39 |
| Engineering & Technology | 35 |
| Life Sciences | 144 |
| Medicine | 181 |
| Social Sciences & Economics | 176 |
| Law | 26 |
| Arts & Humanities | 55 |
| Role | Value |
|---|---|
| Number of PhD’s | 230 |
| Number of PostDoc’s | 70 |
| Number of (Associate, Assistant) Professors | 188 |
| First publication year | Value |
|---|---|
| before 1991 | 61 |
| 1991-2000 | 70 |
| 2001-2005 | 55 |
| 2006-2010 | 79 |
| 2011-2016 | 168 |
| not published (yet) | 96 |
| Country of affiliation | Value |
|---|---|
| Netherlands | 519 |
| United States | 3 |
| Germany | 2 |
| Brazil | 1 |
| DR of Congo | 1 |
| India | 1 |
| Italy | 1 |
| Latvia | 1 |
| Turkey | 1 |
4.2 Organisation demographics VU&VUmc
| Faculty | Number of scientific personnel |
|---|---|
| Godgeleerdheid | 0 |
| Geesteswetenschappen | 0 |
| Rechtsgeleerdheid | 0 |
| Sociale Wetenschappen | 0 |
| Economische Wetenschappen en Bedrijfskunde | 0 |
| Exacte Wetenschappen | 0 |
| Aard- en Levenswetenschappen | 0 |
| Gedrags- en Bewegingswetenschappen | 0 |
| Geneeskunde | 0 |
| Tandheelkunde (ACTA) | 0 |
4.3 Survey disciplines and faculty
| Survey Discipline | Faculty | Number of scientific personnel |
|---|---|---|
| Physical Sciences | Exacte wetenschappen | 0 |
| Engineering & Technology | Exacte wetenschappen | 0 |
| Life Sciences | Aard- en Levenswetenschappen | 0 |
| Medicine | Aard- en Levenswetenschappen AND Geneeskunde AND Tandheelkunde (ACTA) | 0 |
| Social Sciences & Economics | Sociale Wetenschappen AND Economische Wetenschappen en Bedrijfskunde | 0 |
| Law | Rechtsgeleerdheid | 0 |
| Arts & Humanities | Godgeleerdheid AND Geesteswetenschappen | 0 |
5 Popular tools vs Library supported tools
5.1 Top 3 per research phase
Discovery Acrobat Reader, Google Scholar, and Institutional Access are all used by approximately 500 respondents. Looking at the more detailed figures showing all tools per research activity, it becomes clear that these tools are not direct competitors: each are leading tools in different research activities. Acrobat Reader is a very poular tool for reading, Google Scholar for searching literature, and Institutional Access to gain access to academic literature.
Analysis Excel is most widely used within the VU, with SPSS a close second, and R a more distant third. These tools fall within the same activity class, and could be considered rival tools. It is notable that very few reseachers use tools to share there analysis, and it would be interesting to see how this evolves in the future.
Writing Microsoft Word is the most popular writing tool by far, and nearly all respondents indicate that they use Word. The second and third most popular tools in the Writing category are reference managers: Endnote and Mendeley. Endnote is supported by the Library, but Mendeley has only slightly fewer users.
Publication Unsurprisingly, the traditional topical journal (ie, ‘closed’ access) is still the leading outlet for academic work; more than eighty per cent of respondents with at least one publication indicate they have published in such a journal. The second and third most popular tools, ResearchGate and Open Access topical journals, are Open Access outlets. Note that ResearchGate is seen as a tool for archival, rather than publication.
Outreach Generally, outreach to other academics is more popular than outreach to a broader public. ResearchGate and Google Scholar profiles are the most popular tools in this category. Twitter, and to a lesser extent WordPress, are used as tools for outreach to a broader public. Very few researchers make their presentations available for others.
Assessment In the assessment phase, researchers mostly use Thomson reuters’ Web of Science Journal Citation Reports to measure impact. Scopus is used as well, but much less often, presumably because the VU does not offer access to it. Alternative (‘open’) ways of peer review have very few users.
6 VU&VUmc vs OECD countries
Despite the fact that the survey has responses from many different countries, we limit the analysis to the 34 OECD member states (checked 3 May 2016), as these countries are more similar to the Netherlands, and comparison is more meaningful. For example, respondents from countries with low GDP often use Zotero (free of charge), while EndNote (paid) is used more in countries with a higher GDP.
The figures below compare respondents from VU University to respondents from OECD countries. OECD respondents are indicated with solid colored bars, VU respondent bars are hashed. All data is reported in percentages, that is, a solid bar up to 80 for google Scholar in the Discovery_search graph indicates that 80 per cent of all VU respondents reported using Google Scholar for Search in the Discovery process. We report all tools per subactivity.
Overall, differences between OECD and VU repondents are not very large, but there are a few tools that stand out.
Discovery Mendeley is used relatively often at the VU for reading and searching
Analysis Use of SPSS as a tool for analysis is much larger at the VU than for the OECD average.
Writing As in the Discovery phase, Mendeley users for reference management are strongly represented at the VU. The preference for Mendeley is at the expense of all other tools except Endnote. For writing, VU respondents are relatively traditional, with high usage of MS Word and low usage of Google Docs and LaTeX.
Publication Scopus usage is relatively low. Few VU respondents use the institutional repository for archival.
Outreach …
In this section, we report on differences in tool usage between tenured and non-tenured researchers. We consider assistant professors, associate professors and full professors as tenured faculty; PhD students and postdoctoral researchers are grouped as non-tenured.
Here we see all tools in the survey sorted by research phase and research activity.
For these graphs we show the most pronounced differences to the far right and left of each diagram. We calculate the difference by substracting the use in the tenured group from the use in the non-tenured group (both as percentages). The bars on the far-right show the largest positive difference (ie, the tool is more popular among non-tenured researchers); the bars on the far-left show the largest negative difference (ie, the tool is more popular among tenured researchers).
7.1 Discovery
The difference in use for PubMed and table of content announcements for journals stand out as the most significant discrepancies in the Discovery phase. Although not featuring in the ‘top-2’ figures, the use of Mendely stands out when inspecting the more detailed graphs: non-tenured (generally younger) researchers use Mendeley more often in the Reading, Searching and Alert activities within the Discovery phase. 
7.2 Analysis
Tool use for analysis is stronger with non-tenured researchers across the board. This holds for relatively new (and more open) tools such as R and Python, as well as for long-standing software such as Excel and MATLAB. The large difference for SPSS is no outlier. Tools for sharing analysis scripts are not very popular, and tool usage is low overall. Somewhat unexpectedly, use of the Open Science Framework is stronger for the tenured then for the non-tenured group. This could have to do with some cases where that the OSF is often used for grant applications, and that this arguably is a more important activity for tenured researchers. 
7.3 Writing
The importance of Mendeley in the research workflow of non-tenured researchers is again apparent in the Writing Phase. Among this group, Mendeley is the most popular reference management software, more popular than Endnote—the most popular reference tool for tenured researchers. For the writing itself, MS Word is by far the most popular tool among both groups. 
